


Unrequited

by LeoOtherLands



Series: Bittersweet Symphony [4]
Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Accepting someone for who they are, Canon Divergence, Feelings Realization, Fluff and Angst, Hanahaki Disease, Hisoka being Hisoka..., Implied Sexual Content, Love, M/M, Rare Pairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-28 19:56:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18763132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeoOtherLands/pseuds/LeoOtherLands
Summary: "And, standing there, with a single bell-shaped flower in the center of my hand, I knew there was something wrong."Feitan has been without Chrollo for months, in recognition of his feelings for Hisoka. But, he is coming to the slow understanding those feelings aren't returned by the magician...





	Unrequited

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Danagirl623](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Danagirl623/gifts).



> This little piece is for my dear, Discord mom because you planted the thoughts of Hanahaki's slow progression in my mind, and gave me an idea of how that would look. You are the best, and I can't tell you how much you are appreciated.

I’d always liked Lilies of the Valley, or _Convallaria majalis_ , as Chrollo called them. They were pretty and smelled like life. And they were highly poisonous. I never expected I’d die from them.

In Meteor City, the persistent things were one of the only things that _grew_. Forcing their wide, green, blade like leaves up through the dry, hard ground and trash to sprout short stems covered in small, white, bell-shaped flowers, all facing one way. Not the most charming or coveted of the lilies, they were still irresistible when you’d never seen a flower before or smelled anything sweet but rot.

“What that?” I’d demanded the first time I’d seen the plant, walking beside Chrollo through the outskirts of Meteor City’s sprawl. Still a new addition to his collection of wayward souls. I had blood on my hands, and on the knives in my belt, and the reek of death in my nose, then there was a flash of green and the sharp scent of something _not death_.

Chrollo cast a glance at the patch of ground, which held my interest. His face was haggard and dirty. His unwashed hair hanging lank, but not doing enough to cover the red swelling in his forehead, where he had just lately carved the tattoo into his own flesh.

_We won’t spend our lives and die like stray dogs._

The words still made me hiss, but the sight of the green cutting its way out of the brown and mottled disgust of garbage cooled a vicious, _hot_ place coiling up in me, like the _Nen_ I would soon learn to wield with deadly efficiency.

“ _Convallaria majalis_ ,” Chrollo said, looking away. “Don’t touch, Fei. They’ll make you sick.”

I never listened though. I went back to investigate the plants without Chrollo, and soon I had stomach cramps, a light fever, and a rash all over my skin.

The dying was like that. I first noticed the rash on my chest soon after Chrollo stopped calling me to his bed for my feelings about our new member, during a week when the clown had run off to go play with Illumi, or some other of his delights. The rash was red and hot against my pale skin, but I only frowned at it and passed it off. A minor aggravation.

It wasn’t until the rash spread up my throat I started coughing. And even then, the petals didn’t come. No, the disease was subtler than that. The fever came first. Not enough to alert me or Chrollo or anyone else there was something wrong. Only enough to make me flushed and irritable and give me an excuse to stay in my room and away from the other Spiders and their pitying looks.

The petals came after a heist, when I went looking for the clown and found him deeply involved with a pretty waitress. Her skirt hitched up about her hips and her legs wrapped around the magician’s waist. I coughed up my first petal then, with Hisoka’s voice following my retreating back, telling me I could join them if I wanted, the girl wouldn’t mind of course.

Grinding my teeth, hissing through my bandana, I made it into the elaborately decorated corridor, with its brilliant crimson carpet and gold, antique light fixtures, and a few doors down from the clown’s suite before doubling over. One hand on the wall, one over my mouth, a pain in my lungs and a need to _get it out_!

Only, all that came was a petal. Or, _Convallaria majalis’s_ equivalent of a petal. Because Lily of the Valley didn’t have petals. They had bell like flowers. And, standing there, with a single bell-shaped flower in the center of my hand, I knew there was something wrong.

I didn’t know what was wrong, though, so I kept quiet about it until we returned to the hideout and Chrollo’s collection of books. My coughing, by then, a common occurrence, raised no suspicions. Neither did my retreat to Chrollo’s library, as we were both known to read when we were upset.

It was just as well. It was weeks before I found what I needed. My _Danchou’s_ medical books held no mention of anything matching my symptoms. The skin on my back and shoulders, and down my arms was blotching and stinging, and I was choking on fists full of small, waxy bells before I stumbled across a short reference in an obscure book about _Nen_ users, when I wasn’t even looking for an answer.

 _Hanahaki_ Disease. A rare, terminal illness found only in a few, unfortunate _Nen_ users, exposed to highly unsanitary conditions, either in youth, or during a period of weak immunity. The condition was caused by the spore of a parasitic _Nen_ plant, which lodged itself in the victim’s lungs and remained there, dormant, feeding off their _Nen_ until the host began suffering from _Nen_ instability, caused by the stress of unrequited love. At which point, the plant began to grow, devouring the victim’s _Nen_ and lungs, causing a variety of painful symptoms, and eventual death. If the sufferer wished to live, they had two options. One, to win the love of the one they pined for and end the _Nen_ instability allowing the parasite to bloom. Or, two, have the plant surgically removed by a _Nen_ Exorcist.

Unfortunately, for those utilizing the second option, the plant attached itself to all _Nen_ having to do with love, and its surgical removal, also, extracted this, leaving the victim lacking the capacity to experience love in any form, and rendering many of them dangerous and malicious.

Grunting aggravated annoyance, I slammed the book closed and sat for some time. One hand resting on the book’s cover, on my lap, and the other supporting my chin. Eventually, I replaced the book where I’d found it and wandered down the long hall to the clown’s room. He greeted me. Leaning in his doorframe, arms and ankles crossed, eyes clouded with his typical lust, and lips painted and playful in their grin.

“Hello, Feitan,” he cooed. “And what can I do for you?”

“Know what want, stupid clown,” I spat at him. But Hisoka only chuckled mildly, amused, and brought me to his bed, where I let him tie me down and fuck me bloody. Because, if I was going to die, I might as well enjoy the one who was the cause in the interim.

Limping back to my room after, pulling myself along the wall, eyes wide and unfocused as I coughed little, white bells out between my fingers, I had no doubt I would die. Hisoka did not love me. It was clear in the way he toyed with me, then ran off to play with Illumi or some other he preferred. And winning Hisoka’s love was a pointless and impossible endeavor, and I had no desire to lose my ability to love Chrollo, or the rest of the Siders, so death it was.

Surprisingly, resolving to die was not as hard as it seemed. Sliding down the length of my door to the floor in a sprawl of shaking legs and black fabric, it wasn’t difficult at all. Choking another spew of white flowers into my hand, I decided this was fine. Letting my eyes slip closed and my head click back against the wood, my life did a little bubbling dance before my fading vision and I decided, despite the fact it was all ending in a wreck, it was enough.

The succeeding days, I stopped hiding in my room and did my best to not be abnormally short tempered with the rest of the Spiders, or to let them catch me coughing. Not that they would understand why I was exhaling lilies with each cough, which bent me double and burned my lungs with a fire I could not wield or direct as I did Rising Sun.

But Chrollo would.

I had no doubt my _Danchou_ would know from the moment he saw the first petal fall from my lips.

He’d warned me Hisoka wouldn’t make me happy, but I didn’t think he’d meant, when he’d said loving the clown would be a heavy thing to carry, I should die for it. And it worried me, for the first time, I didn’t know what my _Danchou_ would do when he found out. I didn’t know if he would risk my ability to love to save my life.

So, I kept to myself and kept my bandana pulled over my mouth. It helped hardly anyone ever saw me without it. It helped the little, bell like flowers were always dry, despite the feeling I should be coughing up blood with them.

I couldn’t hide the smell, though. The sweet, subtle scent clinging to me the way the stench of Meteor City once had. As though I would never be able to wash it off.

Phinks was the first to notice it. He frowned at me over our cards and wrinkled his nose. “What kind of cologne are you wearing, Fei? You smell all sweet. Like flowers.”

“No stink like stupid flower!” I snarled at him. And instantly had to cough. Cough until my eyes watered and the inside of my bandana was heavy with petals

“Bloody fuck, Fei! Are you alright?” Phinks asked. Eyes wide, taking in my form, bent forward over the cards, one hand braced to keep me from collapsing face first into them.

“Fine!” I snapped, standing, dizzy, and retreating to a chair in a corner.

I slumped there and dozed, feverishly, for several hours before Chrollo appeared in the main room’s doorway to announce our next heist. A simple thing. An ironic thing. The theft of an exotic lily from an arboretum in York New City.

It should have gone off without a hitch. Should have been as easy as walking in and walking out. Only, it wasn’t.

In the days it took us to travel to York New everyone began commenting how I smelled like a green house, quietly, so as not to upset me, and my fever began to take a toll. Wearing me down, making me feel I was walking through a delirium. The rash was creeping down my arms and spreading across my torso by the time we took up residence in an abandoned hotel on the city’s grungier side. But I thought I could manage it. Imagined I could pull off this one, last heist, and make good on Chrollo’s having pulled a sharp-toothed, feral out of a trash heap and made a man of him.

I should have known better.

The arboretum had limited security, and all of it of the ordinary kind. While Shalnark took care of the cameras with his _Hatsu_ , Hisoka was dispatched to distract and encumber the roaming guards, while Chrollo and I retrieved the delicate and highly fragile, miniature biosphere the lily was housed in to keep it alive outside its native environment.

Getting the lily was no problem. My _Hanahaki_ almost seemed to cool with Chrollo beside me. The trouble began when we needed to relocate Hisoka for our get away. The annoying clown bastard was nowhere to be found, and my _Danchou_ refused to leave one of his Spiders behind.

Our window of escape, before the guard shift change, was almost up before we located the magician, happily distracting a thoroughly pleased guard with his cock, in an out of the way area of the arboretum’s main dome, shrouded by weeping willow fronds. That was the end of it. My death seemed to reach up and grip me by the throat.

A pain, like a sun being birthed in my chest, unhinged my fingers, and the glass sphere I was carrying shattered on the mossy ground, covered in a fall of small, bell like flowers I couldn’t hold back any more than I could keep myself from crumbling to the ground. Struggling for breath, which wouldn’t come. Smothering in flower petals, the last thing I saw was the lily we’d come for wilting, at an unbelievable rate, just out of reach of my fingertips.

I came to in a car with my head on Chrollo’s lap. “You should have told me sooner, Fei,” he said, stroking a hand through my hair.

All I could choke out through tears was, “Know.”

I could have protested. Could have begged him not to do anything, but I was found out, and I submitted. Without a fight, I gave myself over to my _Danchou_ to do with what he wanted. I understood, laying there, shaking with fever and hypnotized by the swirling, undulating city lights sliding and gliding over us with the car’s motions, I had been wrong. Deciding to die wasn’t easy when you knew you would be leaving those you loved to suffer. I understood, sprawled helpless under his hands, I loved Chrollo enough to let him remove my ability to keep loving if it was what he felt he had to do. And I trusted him enough to know he wouldn’t let me go wild after.

I was safe. I no longer had to do anything but allow it. So, I allowed him to hold me all the way back to the main hideout. Allowed him to tuck me into his bed, beside him, each night. Allowed him to bathe my blistered skin and flick the flowers from my lips when I couldn’t stop coughing.

As pained and drifting as I was, I could tell I was nearly done by the time we got back to the main hideout. Semi-conscience in his arms, Chrollo carried me to his room and cocooned me in his bed with the words, “I’ll take care of everything, Fei.”

Then he was gone, and I cried because everything smelled like him and it had been ages since I was allowed to fuck him, and, despite it all, I missed that annoying bastard of a clown, and it would be nice to fuck him one more time before it was all gone.

The tears, or maybe the suffocation of the expanding, blade like leaves and little, white, bell-shaped flowers in my lungs, put me to sleep. The door opening and someone, _not_ Chrollo, coming in woke me some unknown time later.

I expected it to be a _Nen_ Exorcist. I expected to lay still, while they extracted the plant from my lungs and left me a living, breathing shell. I was surprised when they crawled into the bed beside me, covering us both with the blankets and wrapping their arms around me. Surprised, but only for a moment.

My eyes were unfocused and watery, making it hard to see more than a blur, but the arms were familiar, just as the scent coming off his skin was well known. All bubble gum and sugar candy. The clown pressed me close to his chest and stroked my back.

I frowned at him, attempting to bring him into focus. “What you want?”

“I should think that would be obvious; I want you, Fei.” The insufferable man bopped me on the nose. “I want you to stop this nonsense. _Hanahaki_ Disease, honestly, Feitan.”

“Stupid clown,” I muttered. I wanted to throw it at him with venom, but my lack of air wouldn’t allow it. “How I stop? It disease, no choice.”

“And, doubtless, you’d like to add it’s all my fault.” The words were followed by a small, intolerable rumble of a laugh.

I narrowed my eyes at him, even as I attempted to snuggle further into him. “Is fault.” At least that came out a hiss. Even if it was immediately followed by a wheezing cough.

Hisoka splayed a hand over my back until it was finished, then he tittered at me. “On the contrary, Feitan. You see, Chrollo explained everything to me in great detail before sending me in here, and we both agree it’s all your fault.”

It was difficult to glower at him properly, with my vision a mess, but I managed what I could. The effort mostly undone by my clinging to him like a fool. Annoyed by him, and the situation both, my reply fell into my native language when it came. _You’re such a bastard._

He made an amused, little sound, tapping me on the chin with one finger, contemplatively. His words showing he might be acquiring an understanding of the oft repeated phrase hurled at him. “Very likely. But think about it, Fei. _Hanahaki_ Disease is caused by a plant, which blooms due to a certain kind of _Nen_ stress. The _plant_ doesn’t know if the love you’re feeling is requited or not. It only knows you’re suffering from _Nen_ instability because _you_ think it’s unrequited.”

I scowled at him, wishing the blur in my eyes would primit me to see him more clearly. As it was, I couldn’t make out if he was laughing at me. I couldn’t determine if his eyes held that mischievous glint and his lips that wicked grin. Couldn’t tell if he was toying with me.

The words held an all too hard and cutting sense, though, which told me they were Chrollo’s words. My _Danchou’s_ words delivered to the clown before he was sent in to speak to me. Because there was no doubt in my mind Hisoka _had been_ sent. There was no possible way even the magician could enter Chrollo’s bedroom without my _Danchou’s_ express permission. But none of that meant the clown was being entirely honest.

“No think!” I huffed. “Know! You no love!”

The magician hummed or purred or cooed, I couldn’t quite identify which, a pleasured sound, and pressed closer to me, so I could feel the hardening of a certain part of him. His lips brushed my ear, the way his words teased my hearing.

“If that’s what you imagine, Feitan, you’re sorely misinformed. Now pay close attention because I’m only going to say this once. I love you, Fei, you idiotic, little man. So, stop this ridiculous notion of dying before you make Chrollo angry with me.”

I hissed at him, both at the insult and the admission it was paired with. The statement did nothing to sooth the thick, tangled leaves and flowers in my chest. On the contrary, it seemed to tighten it, constricting my ability to breathe down to a thread’s width. If I’d had the ability to control my _Nen_ , it would have been rolling off me in burning waves of displeasure.

“You love?” I asked, eyes sliding half closed.

Despite my illness, and lack of _Nen_ , the clown knew me well enough to sense the danger in my tone. But, in his usual fashion, he didn’t care. If anything, my rage only seemed to turn him on more.

“I’m not going to say it again, Fei,” he murmured, hand sliding down my abdomen.

I slapped the appendage away before it could get to what he was reaching for. “No believe! Lie!” It was a croak. “You no love.”

Hisoka sighed, longsuffering, breath sweet across my face. “Really, Feitan. You’re going to be stubborn.”

It would have been more to my liking if I could have stayed angry. If I could have vented my wrath at the bastard. But the _Hanahaki_ stole my energy and vexation both. Wheezing strained breaths, my eyes fell fully closed, and my head thumped forward, forehead resting in the hollow of his throat, where I could inhale his scent. Mind full of one thought; at least I could die in his arms.

“How I know you not only say ‘cause _Danchou_ tell you so.” The words were low and muffled, but the clown heard them all the same.

He laughed low, the rumbles of it passing through me. A hand traced over my cheek, the barest sensation of a touch. “Because I do what I want, Fei. Do you honestly expect Chrollo could make me say anything I didn’t want to?”

A half-mutter, without words, was the only reply I offered. The magician’s statement only one more proof to me of how little he knew my _Danchou_ , or what Chrollo was capable of. I had every certainty the head of the _Supaidā_ could make the clown do whatever he wanted and would not be above using this as a first means of saving my life before the use of a _Nen_ Exorcist.

Yet. An insistent facet of my being reminded me Hisoka was also one of Chrollo’s Spiders. My _Danchou_ would not apply force to one of his Spiders to save another.

A hack and a choke were my attempts at laughter. Just because he had not been prompted to lie to me to save my life did not guarantee the clown’s honesty, though. The man had his own motivations for everything, and only a fool anticipated he understood them. I was sick of being a fool.

“You like lie! How I know you no play?”

“Because, Fei, if I wanted to play, I would go find Illumi, or a host of others.”

That was the end of it for the second time. My lungs seized and grew heavy with that need to _get it out_! Only, there was no way to get the plants out. I could feel the blade like leaves clustering close in the thick way they had, and the bell-shaped flowers clawing their way up my throat with their curled-back edges scraping at me.

My whole body heaved in the clown’s arms, and my hands were stiff on his shoulders, hanging on for the life I felt slipping away. My head rang with a persistent, over-reaching tone, blocking out all else. Yet, in the midst of it all, my eyes flared wide and my vision brightened from the dull thing it had been, offering me a clear portrait of the clown’s face, painted in shades of brilliant terror. His hands gripped me in turn, as if, by their strength, he could hold me together and repress the flood of white I expelled between us. The sight was short. My eyes teared up from the strain of my coughs, veiling it in crystal, but it was all I needed.

My coughs broke to hiccups and _air_ , sweet, simple air breathed into my lungs. “You scared!” I huffed, a single, white flower trailing the words.

Hisoka flicked it away. “Stop talking nonsense, Fei.”

“No!” My voice had strengthened. “You scared! Scared I die!”

He sighed again. “Well, what did you expect, Fei, after what I said to you?”

“No lie,” I said, reasoning it out even as I articulated it.

Another aggrieved sound came out of the large man. “Whether or not you believe it, I don’t play with you, Fei.”

The clown actually hugged me, both hands sliding down my spine to press me close to his chest. I shook my head to clear it, to brush aside the last of the clouds obstructing my vision. My fever had broken so suddenly it left me dizzy, and though I still rasped small coughs, the flowers which came with them were soft and browning. A certain sign the plants were wilting as quickly as the lily we’d attempted to steal, even if I hadn’t been able to breathe again.

I scowled at the man holding me. “You love?” It wasn’t as though I doubted it any longer, so much as I had to work my head around it by saying it aloud.

“I don’t know how you ever thought otherwise,” the magician cooed.

I hit him hard enough to make him wince. “Lot’s ways!”

“Yes, well.” The aggravating bastard shrugged off the words. “I’m not a housewife, Fei, and you shouldn’t expect me to act like one. I’m not tame, and I’m never going to be.”

“No,” I agreed. “No tame! Pig!”

“Such a thing to say,” the clown purred, seemingly more please than annoyed by the insult. Laughing low, he pressed me close, letting me feel his arousal against my body.

My eyes narrowed. “You excited fuck dying man?”

“But you’re not dying, Fei,” he tittered, brushing withering bell-shaped flowers from between us. “Besides, I’ve been wanting to get into Chrollo’s bed for some time. Though, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind. I was hoping for the bed’s usual occupant, but I suppose, I’ll have to settle for you, Fei.”

His wicked, irritating grin spread those glossed lips, and he tilted his face up, so he had to look sidelong at me. Hoping to invoke my ire. I curled my hands on his shoulders, hissing through my teeth.

“You want fuck _Danchou_?” I spat at him.

“Naturally.” The clown rolled his eyes. “Can you blame me? You’ve fucked him after all.”

“ _Danchou_ no fuck you,” I assured. “No like!”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. But it hardly matters.” The magician leaned into me, placed a kiss between my eyes, then moved to my lips, while his hand made another journey down my midriff. This time, I let him find what he wanted. Gasping and hissing a little as his fingers teased around inside my pants.

“We can have a little fun, Feitan,” Hisoka crooned. “Though, we should probably move to my room. I doubt Chrollo would appreciate our messing up his bed.”

“Not know _Danchou_!” I snapped, once again twitching the bastard’s hand away and pushing back from him. “He send you here for reason!” To the clown’s surprise, but obvious delight, I forced my way out of his arms, shoved him onto his back, and climbed atop him to straddle his waist. “You fuck now, stupid clown!”

**Author's Note:**

> I am an original fiction author and fan fiction writer who literally lives for comments, even if they are nothing but inarticulate vowel screams. Please give me comments people! I will literally beg for them!
> 
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> 
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